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Hackers are putting top technology executives under severe pressure. And this week's sudden departure of Target's chief information officer in the wake of the company's massive pre-Christmas data breach has only ratcheted up the stress.

Financial institutions' bill for Target's massive data breach keeps rising. Costs related to the holiday data theft has now exceeded $200 million for financial institutions, according to data collected by the Consumer Bankers Association and the Credit Union National Association.

A western Pennsylvania heating and refrigeration contractor said it was the victim of a "sophisticated cyber attack operation" that is being investigated by the Secret Service and possibly linked to the data breach that enabled hackers to access millions of credit card numbers belonging to Target store customers.

In December 2012 and February 2013, crime ring members in 27 countries allegedly used stolen prepaid MasterCard debit card numbers to withdraw the millions from ATM machines. Several have already been arrested worldwide and two already convicted.

Nine first-responders were killed, seven others injured and two were missing as they battled a fire of unknown origin that destroyed an archive of bank documents in Argentina's capital on Wednesday. The fire at the Iron Mountain warehouse took hours to control and the sprawling building appeared to be ruined.

Banks and America's big retailers are locked in a debate over the massive breach of millions of consumers' data that gripped Target Corp. during the holiday season. At issue: Which industry bears more responsibility for protecting consumers' personal information?

A western Pennsylvania credit union is suing Target Corp. for the cost of reissuing debit cards to about 75 customers whose account information was compromised by computer hackers who stole 40 million credit and debit card numbers from the retailer's customers.

A massive theft of customer data from three major credit card firms in South Korea has shown security lapses in the financial industry. First revealed by prosecutors, the theft of information linked to 80 million credit cards such as salaries, monthly card usage, credit rating and card numbers has sparked widespread public concern.

Royal Bank of Scotland customers found themselves unable to use debit or credit cards on the busiest shopping day of the year. Ross McEwan, who took over as CEO this year, apologized. He acknowledged the bank had failed for decades to invest properly in its systems and that it was working to set this right.

New York financial regulators have surveyed more than 200 banks and other financial institutions about their cyber security and will soon expand their analysis to insurers with trillions of dollars of assets. Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky says New York has "tempting targets" for computer crime.

The Nasdaq shut down trading on one of its options markets Friday, the latest technical problem to hit the exchange. Nasdaq OMX said it halted trading at 10:36 a.m. Eastern Time and announced at 2:10 p.m. that it would shut down options trading for the rest of the day. Regular stock trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange was not affected.

Financial services company Knight Capital Americas will pay $12 million to settle charges it violated SEC rules in connection with a costly trading glitch in August 2012. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that Knight didn't have adequate safeguards to limit the risks posed by its access to markets.

Eight men have been arrested on suspicion of stealing 1.3 million pounds ($2 million) from a Barclays bank branch by tapping into its computers, British police said Friday. The gang is accused of installing a KVM device, or keyboard video mouse, on the bank's computer system that allowed it to carry out the cyber theft.

London police said Friday they arrested 12 men involved in a bold attempt to take control of a bank's computer in order to rob the institution. The men are accused of tampering with a computer inside a Santander bank branch to seize control of the bank's computer systems.

The latest high-tech disruption in the financial markets increases the pressure on Nasdaq and other electronic exchanges to take steps to avoid future breakdowns and manage them better if they do occur. The three-hour trading outage on the Nasdaq stock exchange Thursday also can be expected to trigger new rounds of regulatory scrutiny on computer-driven trading.

A mysterious glitch halted trading on the Nasdaq for three hours Thursday in the latest major electronic breakdown on Wall Street, embarrassing the stock exchange that hosts the biggest names in technology, including Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Four Russian nationals and a Ukrainian have been charged with running a sophisticated hacking organization that over seven years penetrated computer networks of more than a dozen major American and international corporations, stealing and selling at least 160 million credit and debit card numbers, resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

It's a war game, Wall Street style. Banks large and small are girding for an elaborate drill this week that will test how they would fare if hackers unleashed a powerful and coordinated attack against them.

BAE Systems' Detica NetReveal® solution has been positioned a Category Leader in the Enterprise Fraud Management Solutions 2013 RiskTech Quadrant(1) from Chartis. Financial crime is a growing area of concern for financial institutions with new threats continuously emerging. The rise of mobile and internet channels coupled with the harsh economic climate means that fraud is on the increase.

Some on Wall Street shrugged off the outage. "I don't think it is too big of a deal if it's a one day thing. If it keeps happening, of course, that's different," said Ryan Detrick, a senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Rentsys Recovery Services, a provider of comprehensive disaster recovery solutions for banks, credit unions, mortgage lenders and other organizations, announced the launch of its new Customer On-Boarding Process. The on-boarding process was designed to prepare financial institutions for a more efficient recovery following a disaster and to prepare for an audit.

German police say robbers dug a 30-meter (100-foot) tunnel into the safe deposit room of a Berlin bank and escaped with their haul, setting a fire as they left to cover their tracks. Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf says the tunnel led from an underground garage into the bank's safe deposit room.

American Enterprise Bank operates a total of two branches with approximately $199 million in assets. The bank made the strategic decision to outsource critical components of its IT infrastructure and began gradually moving systems into a hosted environment.

The Centurion Hosted High Availability service is operated from a secure facility in Branson, Mo., dubbed the "Mountain." Previously a dolomite rock mine, this hardened two million square foot facility is located 175 feet below ground and virtually impervious to natural disasters including hurricanes, floods, and tornados.